


April Showers

by Kittypatch



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Break Up, Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Heartbreak, M/M, One Night Stands, Post-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Pre-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Soul Punk Era Patrick Stump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-08 04:23:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12856680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittypatch/pseuds/Kittypatch
Summary: 2014. Patrick's 30th birthday. Pete's reflects on their past when something changes their future forever.





	1. Pre-Hiatus

**Author's Note:**

> Two things to note:   
> 1) the time line has been jiggled and manipulated to make things work and 2) everything beneath NOW is actually 2014 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this one :)

**NOW**

   
They laid there afterward, dwelling in the sweaty aftermath, chests rising and falling, breathing in and out of sync. Pete pushed his fingers over Patrick's damp cheek, nudging him just to see. To make sure that he was real and alive and not some twisted made up variation.  
   
"I’m okay," Patrick said, by way of responding. Pete couldn't make out his features in the darkness of the room, but he needed something more. Something to match what they'd just put their friendship through.  
   
"Are we okay?" Pete answered back. His lips were still burning, and he could taste Patrick's tongue in his mouth; his skin. The taste of the beer he’d been drinking only an hour before. Patrick shifted on the bed, until their noses were touching in a graze of a kiss.  
   
"I don't know, Pete."  
   
 ****

**2001**

   
He was doing it for Joe. That's what Pete told himself. Do it for the kid who wanted another new band. Pop-punk was easier to fake anyhow, and Pete only needed it to last until he graduated.  
   
"So, there's this kid," Joe explained. He stood in Pete's basement, finishing the last dregs of his cigarette. Should Pete tell him off for that? Probably. His mom would be mad about smoke down here. "He's a tiny weirdo that eavesdrops, but I heard his demos man, not bad."  
   
"Good for a pop-punk band?" Pete questioned. Joe smirked, then nodded his head.  
   
Joe was right about Patrick being a weirdo. They showed up at his house, and then he showed up at the door in the worst kind of ensemble. Knee high socks, shorts, an ugly sweater. He looked sweet beneath it; all blond and wide eyed. Like those creepy porcelain dolls that Pete’s grandmother collected. Strictly not punk-rock.  
   
"I thought you'd be taller," Patrick said, by way of greeting. He scanned Pete with his round eyes and then looked to Joe, smiling. "Hi, Joe."  
   
"But you're, like, tiny," Pete said back, following Patrick through the house. This kid was in dire need of a growth spurt. And a dress sense, but that was way more fixable.  
   
"Right, but I'm not famous," Patrick rolled a shoulder and then frowned. Pete stared at the knee length socks in wonder. “And I sure as fuck don't act like I am.”  
   
He was good enough to put in the band, even if he was _really_ annoying. Pete reminded himself that not every seventeen-year-old was as cool as Joe.  Seventeen was legal though. Creepy but legal, so Pete didn't hate the very specific thoughts he had about Patrick's mouth. His current girlfriend was the same age, anyway. Whatever, Pete was immature. He owned it.  
   
"All in all, I think things would be a lot better if I was a drummer," Patrick said at their first show. There was no one there for them. In fact, there was barely anyone there for the actual main band. Pete was drinking red bull, and watching the impending freak out with amusement.  
   
"Picture everyone naked," Joe was saying, unhelpfully.  
   
"Even you?" Patrick frowned, but at least his fear was distracted for a few seconds.  
   
“Patrick, don't take Joe's shitty advice,” Pete cut in, light headed from all the energy drink and zero food. “There’s like ten people out there. There's no one to be nervous at.”  
   
“Somehow that's worse.”  
   
They did okay. They survived as support and hardly ever got shit thrown at them. Patrick's vocals were great one night and shitty the next, but it didn't matter. Pete's bass skills generally only surpassed _not the worst_ all the time.  
   
Patrick always acted a little bit like he hated him though. He would come over after school and talk to Joe and the other two idiots that performed even worse than Pete on a good night. He mostly ignored Pete. So Pete would bring his girlfriend over instead and make out with her in the corner while the rest played at being legitimate musicians.  
   
“Your girlfriend is seventeen,” Patrick told Pete one day, maybe a year later, when there was no one else around.  
   
“You’re seventeen,” Pete said back. Patrick's lips were chapped and he had a row of pimples against his hairline. He was _really_ young, so was Joe, but it meant Pete got the final say in band things. He was the one having to organize it all. And with all the things wrong with him, at least he didn't have acne.

“Just saying that if I was in my twenties I wouldn't be dating a high schooler. It’s gross.”  
   
“It’s legal,” Pete shrugged. He hadn't met her until after she’d turned seventeen, or at least he hadn’t met her in her bedroom until that age. It was legal and only Patrick had ever said anything anyway. Well, they had, but only as a joke.  
   
“Legal doesn't mean it’s right,” Patrick said, but then he looked away, over Pete’s shoulder instead. “Whatever. It isn't my business.”  
   
“You’re right. It's not.”  
   
Pete wasn't mad at Patrick having an opinion. He was entitled to it and sometimes, in Pete's deep dark nights alone, he figured he was probably right. There was a reason he never met up with her after school. He didn't want to be the creepy boyfriend meeting her at the gates. There was a reason they only hooked up at her place when her parents weren’t in. It all made sense, but when he was with her, his head settled into a different spot.  
   
They started to write together, and it was a way to really push Patrick's buttons. He’d take Patrick's lyrics, scrap them and consider his own superior. Joe backed him up because it was easier to piss Patrick off than Pete. Pete was the one with the links and the ability to get them out of the ‘burbs. So, Pete's lyrics were better. And Patrick got used to it. He stuck with the music, pretended it didn't bother him, even when he bitched about the rhyming scheme fitting the chords. It worked, mostly.  
   
 ****

**NOW**

Patrick fell asleep first. Pete couldn't join him in it, he was a jumbled bundle of nerves at what they'd done. _Why had they done it?_ Why couldn't they leave their friendship the way it was? They'd only just fixed what had been broken in the past.  
   
Patrick rolled away from Pete in sleep, but when the anxiety became too much he launched silently from the bed. He had energy to burn, energy that he somehow hadn’t expended in bed with Patrick.  
   
Pete slid on some clothes, some sneakers, and went for a late-night run. He'd been drunk earlier in the night, when he'd taken Patrick to bed, but he’d always been quick to slide back into soberness. It was a cool night and the air felt good against his skin.  
   
Everywhere was so safe and sanitized where he lived that this all felt like an eerie waking nightmare. Something needed to burst, a dam needed to break, and they needed to do something to get past what they’d just done to their friendship. Pete couldn't ruin it, not again.  
   
He took an easy route, one he could follow with his eyes closed. He didn’t close them, because if he did, he’d see Patrick as he’d been hours before; pressing giggle-kisses against Pete’s mouth, hands on his shoulders, pulling Pete’s clothes away from his body, laughing when Pete did the same to him.  
   
   
   
 ****

**2003**

   
Patrick got a girlfriend called Anna at some point, right when they were becoming really popular in the Midwest, especially with Andy on drums. They were in their shared apartment now, the one that Pete forced his way into. They all had their girlfriends and somehow never actually caught each other in the act.  
   
Anna seemed to calm his superiority complex around Pete a little bit. It was like he was too busy following her around like a lost puppy to comment on Pete’s love life, or his crappy lyrics. For the most part he got on with Patrick anyway. They had the same taste in eighties movies, and Patrick was actually funny when the moment struck.  
   
“Young love,” Joe sighed sarcastically, watching Patrick and Anna hold hands in the corner. Pete nodded his head beside him. He didn’t remember ever being in a relationship that consisted of calmly smiling and holding hands together. “He’s better on stage now that he has her.”  
   
“Yeah, I guess.” Pete hadn't really noticed. Patrick was shy and didn't particularly enjoy performing. It had zero to do with a girlfriend.  
   
He still thought about Patrick’s stupid red lips and his wide eyes and how they were so annoyingly clued in but clueless on everything. He was always there when Pete wanted to vent, and he never mentioned the age thing again.  
   
“You can vent to me about Anna if you like,” Pete told him, because as unbalanced as their friendship probably was, he wanted to put it out there.  
   
“I have nothing to vent about,” Patrick shrugged. “I like to keep things private.”  
   
Sometimes, on the nights when Pete couldn't sleep for anything, he’d crawl out of his mess of blankets and head into the dump of a living room. Sometimes Patrick would be up, staring out of the window in layers of hoodies. He didn't sleep much either, but he never complained about it.  
   
“Wanna go for a drive?” Pete asked, and Patrick would always nod and unfurl himself from the couch to follow Pete.  
   
Maybe that's where they became friends, or were at their closest. Patrick was too tired to bitch Pete out about things, and Pete could spit whatever was burdening his chest to Patrick. It was easier to do when he had other things to focus on and darkness shrouding them both.  
   
Patrick got to pick the station they played on the radio and it fuzzily fell in and out of signal as Pete drove and explained every tiny thing playing on his mind. Patrick would nod his head, but wouldn't offer anything back. Sometimes that really pissed Pete off.  
   
“Why don't you ever talk about what's going on with you?” Pete asked when he'd let every rotting thought of his current life out in the open.  
   
“I guess nothing is going on with me?” Patrick shrugged. Even though Pete wasn't looking at him, he still heard it in his voice. “I don't know. It's all a little inconsequential, that's who I am.”  
   
“No, you're not.”  
   
“I just don't think the way I feel is really any different to how a ton of other people feel.” When Pete looked over, he saw that Patrick was frowning down at his knees. “My parents really want me to go to college next year. They’re super mad that I’m taking a year off especially after I barely graduated.”  
   
“You might be famous in six months.”  
   
“I dunno. I don't think I'll ever be, not really.” Patrick turned the music up after that. Pete wanted to ask him something else, to question what was really up, but he didn't know how. In a way, it was always easier to talk about himself.  
   
And that's what they did. They recorded their songs, they played their shows and they even lived together, but the best part was always the little midnight runs in Pete’s beat up car. He'd drive them to wherever, to talk about himself, and Patrick would answer back, buy them something shitty to eat in the all-hours diner, and then they'd drive home again. Sometimes Patrick would fall asleep on the ride home, sometimes he'd hum along to the song playing on the radio. Pete would write lyrics later, fragments of songs and Patrick would turn them into real life versions, articulating what Pete had been trying to say in the first place.

****

**NOW**

   
When he’d lapped the route twice and was drawing breath heavier with every step, he found his way back home. He caught his breath as he walked up the steps to his house and through the side gate. He opened the door and stood in the silent mouth of his house for a moment.  
   
He showered because he was soaked with sweat, but it didn’t make him feel any better. He felt sick, that anxious type that made his skin itch and his hands restless. He pulled on clothes and walked through his house into his bedroom, wondering what he’d find.  
   
Patrick was pulling his clothes on, brow furrowed as he did up the small buttons of his shirt. Pete watched him, cautious and slow, dressing himself up in the early hours. He looked up when he realized Pete was back, and stared at him.  
   
“Do you want me to go?” Patrick asked calmly. His hands were neatly in his lap, his gray-black jeans still unbuckled. Pete wanted him to stay, to take those clothes off and climb under the covers with him some more, but he just couldn’t do it.  
   
“I want you to go,” Pete said, looking away so as not to see Patrick’s reaction. “I’ll call you a cab.”  
   
Pete dawdled in the hallway, hating his dumbass reaction. Why was he being like this? He stood in front of his bedroom door, phone in his hand. He couldn’t see into the room from this angle and Patrick wasn’t rushing out to him either. He had his thumb tracing over his contacts before he counted to ten.

He walked back into the room and watched Patrick lift his head up from where he had it bowed. Pete tucked his phone into his pocket and stared at his friend.  
   
“You wanna go on a drive instead? Somewhere outside this manifestation of my anxiety?”  
   
“Poetic,” Patrick said, voice hidden in the huskiness of his throat. He nodded his head though, and stood up, finally. He tugged his hand through the tuft of hair laying over his face. “Drive like old times?”  
   
“Something like that.”  
   
 ****

**2004**

   
He didn’t actually _want_ to die, that’s what he kept telling himself as he heard people worry around him. He was home now from the _incident._ His mom had called his shrink and his shrink had changed his dosage and he’d had fumbled conversations with Joe on the phone, and Andy, who was the least awkward. They were having to go abroad without him, a major tour away from the States and he couldn’t even partake. Who was going to do the media and press? Patrick was a shy idiot, a terrible front man. Joe wasn’t much better, and for all intents and purposes, people just didn’t give a fuck about the drummer.  
   
“I’m going to have to talk on stage and everything.” Patrick was sitting beside Pete, the pair of them in Pete’s room in his parent’s house. Technically he had a floor to himself, because he grew up rich and privileged, but his mom was keeping a close watch on him.  
   
“I’m not gonna do it again. I didn’t even plan it when it happened. I was just there in the parking lot and everything got too much.” He was sprawled on his bed, head foggy, unable to find the energy to do anything but stare at the yellowed white of his ceiling.  
   
“I know,” Patrick was saying. “Could you write me a script on what to say between songs because I think I’ll choke otherwise.”  
   
Patrick was the softest kindest person Pete knew, and so he smiled and nodded and played along with him. He wasn’t being self-indulgent or hiding Pete’s problems with his own, he was just masking the embarrassment Pete felt at what had happened.  
   
“The fall out seems so huge,” Pete said. Jeanae hadn’t been in contact, and he was glad for it. It wasn’t her fault, but she had made things a little harder on his brain. And she had her own demons, he was no good for those either. “Not like I slit my wrists.”  
   
“I don’t think it’s the way you do it, just the doing it,” Patrick said, giving up the charade of stage fright. He had it of course, and Pete knew he was genuinely petrified to go on stage and use his voice for something other than singing, but he also had more tact than to really talk about it. “Even if you didn’t want to do it I’m glad it didn’t work anyway.”

“Huh?” Pete thought he got it, but he wasn’t sure.  
   
“I wouldn’t want to lose you,” Patrick said. “I always liked you, you know, even when I got on at you about Jeanae. I always secretly thought you were cool.” When Pete found a tiny amount of energy, he twisted his head and saw Patrick sitting hunched on a small slice of Pete’s bed, cap over his face, fingers pressing into his cheeks. Pete sometimes forgot how young he was, just a kid.  
   
“But not anymore?”  
   
“I don’t think you’re cool anymore because I live with you,” Patrick said, he peeled his fingers from his cheeks and his red lips split into a small grin, a row of teeth showing in the bad light. “But we’re friends and I respect you and I care and I don’t want to lose you. And I know what it’s like to be on the other side.”  
   
“What do you mean?”  
   
“Sometimes I just wake up and I wonder how I’m still alive,” Patrick said plainly. Just as Pete had stared wistfully up at the ceiling, Patrick’s focal point was the floor. Pete felt uneasy through his sluggishness, with what Patrick was saying. “It doesn’t really matter though.”  
   
“I think it does,” Pete said, but he didn’t know how to respond. He was fumbling through his own confused attempt to make the heaviness stop, he didn’t know what to do with whatever Patrick had just told him.  
   
“So, can you help me write something that I can say?” Patrick was the perfect little actor in timing. Looking up at Pete stiffly, terrified that he’d push further. He was too tired, too lethargic to do anything though, so he just laughed as well as he could and bumped his palm against the beak of Patrick’s cap.  
   
“Grab a notebook, then. I’ll give you my best stuff.”  
   
 ****

**NOW**

   
Pete didn't know what to say as he drove them away from his house. They never traveled like this anymore. Years ago they’d driven out together, bonding over movies. Usually Pete would spend the time bitching about his life and Patrick would listen. Was that how it had always been?  
   
“I'm sorry,” Pete started to say, as he pulled onto the highway. At least the traffic had cooled down at this time. “For how I used to be.”  
   
“Maybe I should apologize too,” Patrick laughed. His voice was quieter than normal, barely above a whisper. “I was such a dick to you when I was a kid.”  
   
“I deserved it,” Pete shrugged. “We were both kind of douchey, but I did try and strangle you with a gas pump.”  
   
“I punched you in the recording studio,” Patrick shrugged. Pete chanced a look at him even though it was dark. Patrick was looking at him, eyes shining even in the shadows of the car. “We could just call a truce on it all.”  
   
“Alright.” Pete’s voice came out little more than a whisper as he looked out onto the road again.  
   
 ****

**2005**

   
Legends would be made on Warped. Pete knew it already. They'd played the year before, but now they were big shots, really motherfucking giants in the pop punk world. Patrick would get so mad when Pete said that, but it was true. Kids loved them so much more than other bands around, bands that were a billion times more pulled together than they were.  
   
Pete was feeling better than the blip from the year before. It was a weird time; it hadn't even felt like the lowest, but it was what it was. Every time an interviewer brought it up the shame crashed over him. It was enough to keep him just off the edge of getting too fucked up again. Just crazy enough to keep the fans interested.  
   
Jeanae was staying away for the time being. They were on a cool off period, which was fine by Pete. It was the heat of the summer and they were touring. He wanted to find the summer with someone else, with enough someones to forget about the mess inside his head.  
   
“I hope you got a lotta condoms with you,” Joe informed Pete, when Pete informed the guys of _his_ plans of the tour. No one had brought girlfriends, but they were all decent upstanding dudes. “I feel like herpes is probably gonna happen either way.”  
   
They’d found their footing right away. Pete got close with Mikey Way, who he'd only known of briefly before the summer and it was hilarious watching little girls lose their shit about them. The most poetically placed words on his blog were dissected and determined by people across the country who had no idea who they actually were, building up some illicit affair between them. Mikey went along with it, My Chem were in a bigger place right now, but already Fall Out Boy weren't far behind. And this kind of shit was popular right now. It got kids rowdy when he touched Patrick on stage and it made them dizzy with excitement online too.  
   
Somewhere between stops, he stopped keeping edge. He'd always been hit and miss with it, nowhere near Andy's level, but he felt kinda dumb having the tats and a beer in his hand. Alcohol made him feel more alive, made him not feel as crazy as his head made him.  
   
“Are you alright, dude?” Patrick asked him, one time. They were on the same bus, Pete had his sidekick resting on his stomach, a buzz of activity. Patrick was standing in front of him, hands on his hips, belly rolling ever so slightly forward from his red shirt.  
   
“M’fine,” Pete said, he wasn't in the mood for cute little conversations with the always empathetic Patrick. Sometimes you wanted to get fucked up on your own terms.  
   
“You don't look fine,” Patrick murmured softly, and Pete really tried hard not to fight with him because he was a baby and also insanely sensitive. Pete hid his insecurities under layers of metaphorically scarred skin, Patrick wasn't at that place yet.  
   
“I feel like I look a lot better than you, so,” Pete said, bringing the spite out in his voice, just so that he could watch Patrick get up and leave, feet stomping down the steps of the bus and out into the bustling atmosphere of the tour.  
   
They lost some intimacy on this tour Pete could admit that during his sober moments. FOB stopped feeling like this special thing between the four of them, stuck in a stinking van with limited amounts of crew. Instead they felt like an open wound, ripe for infection as the crowds became bigger and the circle of friends and crew became larger. Pete saw less of his band mates and more of Mikey, more of New Friends and New Girls that Jeanae didn't know about. He poured his sanity away on this tour and as they became larger and larger.  
   
Things didn't really slow down once they were off tour, they just became slightly more hygienic and clean. They were outside of each other's heads and personal spaces, which gave them a chance to like each other again. Plus, he had Jeanae again, and for a really long time, at least three weeks, things were going good for them. They fucked and they got high and they kept their mess of a life contained with each other.  
   
Pete had only found out about the cheating through Jeanae, who knew everything about everyone and liked to throw it in Pete's face on occasion. Somehow, she knew about the Anna stuff, and it was totally an accident, but maybe Pete should know anyway.  
   
“What do I do with that information?” Pete had asked her, because he'd grown so close with Patrick now again, away from the confines of a tour bus. He didn't even mind when he got punched for being a dick in the studio. He was also getting on with Jeanae too, which was always a plus.  
   
“Do what you want with it,” she'd told him and wandered off. They were _mostly_  getting on.  
   
The best thing to do would be to tell Patrick. So he did, and he got punched, again, and then Patrick, with wet eyes, asked him how he knew.  
   
“Jeanae told me. She said Anna is super sorry she did it.” Pete was fuming personally. On the inside. You don't do that kind of shit to Patrick, who with age, seemed to get more and more self-conscious. As he aged out of his teen years the sarcastic angst had flown with it. He was a dick to Pete, and quick to anger, but that was as far as it got. With everyone else he was pretty much a sweetheart.  
   
“I don't think it's true. I think it's just Jeanae,” Patrick said. He'd seen their fights in the past, he knew how they liked to infect everyone else with their pain, but this wasn't it. Patrick walked off before he had the chance. “We have an apartment together. I mean, when we’re home. We share one.”  
   
“We haven't been off tour in forever,” Pete pointed out. They'd done Warped, they'd done support acts and festivals and interviews, music videos and now their own tour. They hadn't hit home in forever. In a really long time.  
   
Patrick disappeared for maybe three days on tour afterward. He was always late for soundcheck anyway, but he only showed up for the show each night and then slinked away to his bunk again. Pete was usually distracted; hot girlfriend, cameras to gurn in front of, and roadies to annoy, but on the third night of no Patrick he decided to break the rule of not opening each others curtains.  
   
Pete pulled open Patrick's curtain and stared down at his bandmate. Patrick was laying there, hat off, hair too long and face pulled tight. His eyes were pink, like he'd either been crying, or trying really hard not to.  
   
“Move over,” Pete said. He pulled himself up into Patrick's bunk, and then pulled the curtain across again. Patrick yanked his arm from beneath Pete's back and crossed them over his chest. Pete laid with him for a while, just waiting.  
   
“It happened accidentally. Three times,” Patrick said softly. “‘Cause I'm away on tour so much.”  
   
“That isn't a great excuse,” Pete pointed out. It sounded like something he'd say. “I’m sorry, dude.”  
   
“S’okay.” Patrick said. His breathing was heavy, like he was trying to control it. “She was my first serious girlfriend. First serious heartbreak. I love her, dude. We have cats.” That sounded funny, but Pete tried not to laugh about it.  
   
“I know you do. Have you ended things?” Pete asked. He probably wouldn't have, but like, he enjoyed dwelling in heartache. Made for better art, fucked his head up a little more. He liked to think Patrick was better than that.  
   
“I think she was grateful that I did it. So she wouldn't have to hurt me more.” Patrick sniffed and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Pete patted his shoulder, rubbing him over and over.  
   
“Fuck her then,” Pete said. It was almost nice giving support rather than expecting it from Patrick instead.

****

**NOW**

Pete drove over familiar roads, trying to think of something to say and trying not to say anything too inflammatory; too much in either direction. He didn’t know what they’d done, why they’re done it. It had been there of course, always bubbling beneath the surface, but he hadn’t planned on it breaking through.  
   
“Don’t you think what happened tonight is a bad idea?” he said eventually. His fingers were tight on the steering wheel, but when he looked at Patrick briefly he had a soft, sleepy expression. Content-ness, probably. That’s what Pete figured.  
   
“Why is it a bad idea? Was I that bad?” Patrick said. He didn’t sound self-conscious. Without a doubt, he felt how hard Pete had come inside him, that doesn’t happen during bad sex. There was just a gentleness tonight as they drove and drove.  
   
“You were great,” Pete said. “Amazing. But it might change things.”  
   
“I guess it probably will.”  
   
“That feels like a bad thing to me.”  
   
“Oh,” Patrick said. “Alright.”  
   
   
 ****

**2006**

   
After their night together, sitting in Patrick’s bunk, and ignoring the fact that he was borderline crying, Patrick, in his Patrick way, decided to just put his head down. And Pete, well, he kept an eye on him, but he got so wrapped up in everything else that he just allowed Patrick to get on with it.  
   
They were on another tour and Pete had broken up and gotten back together with Jeanae three times now. They were together now, for the most part. They had a dog. And okay, she had gone home for a break, but technically they were together. He was wearing her hoodie, but it didn't smell like either of them.  
   
They were all playing a game of _never have I ever._ Patrick and Joe were legal to drink now and they'd both started a while ago now anyway, but they were still so young and Pete forgot sometimes. Forgot that they were actual babies on tour.  
   
“Okay, I got a good one!” Joe said. Pete was sitting this round out now. He wasn't keeping edge anymore, but he was doped up on his own medication and watched lazily from across the couch from them. There was a group of them playing it, Joe, Patrick, some roadies and their tour manager. “Never have I ever sucked dick.”  
   
There was cheering and oohs at Joe’s comment and then Pete watched as Patrick scowled and downed his shot. There was a moment of silence, where everyone saw him down the drink, before suddenly the room burst into more jeers.  
   
“Holy fuck, was it Pete’s?” Joe asked. Patrick flipped him off and turned a deep purple, staring down at the floor. When other people turned to Pete, like he would have known, he just rolled his own shoulder, questioning Patrick’s response himself.  
   
“Keep me out of this, man.”

 

Patrick was sitting beside Pete on his bathroom floor, a warm full-bodied comforting creature, laying a gentle hand on Pete's shoulder.  
   
“It’s not like you have a small dick,” Patrick said. He sounded only half like he was joking. “Least everyone knows the dickishness isn't you overcompensating for something.”  
   
“Everyone seen it, Patrick,” Pete said. He folded his hands over his face and rubbed at his eyes. He didn't know why he'd sent it in the first place. He'd been horny and she'd been full of vengeance. Everyone did it, right? Andy had done it and got away with it before. He was the biggest horn dog in the band, everyone seemed to forget that. He was the one that never fucked up like this.  
   
“It’ll blow over,” Patrick told him. Pete looked at Patrick, at his round body, his gingery sideburns. He was a good kid. He deserved more than to be comforting Pete time after time.  
   
“Whose dick did you suck?”  
   
“Why do you think it's only one?” Patrick laughed. He patted Pete's shoulder and then stood up. “If you're asking me intrusive questions then you must be feeling better about your own situation.”  
   
“Promise me it'll be alright,” Pete asked. He looked up at Patrick's stupidly soft face and felt better for the dependability he found there.  
   
“It’ll be fine, Pete.”  
   
It didn't feel fine for a long time, but Pete got what he could out of a bad situation and made sure to milk the nudes for all he could. He posed and mocked himself until he felt like he was laughing along with everyone else. It wasn't funny, it would never be funny, but he faked it well enough. He made money out of it, but most people thought he was a dick anyway. There was no turning over that page.  
   
 ****

**NOW**

Pete pulled away from the traffic heading out of the city and instead drove closer toward the coast. Driving had always been a way to clear his head, but he couldn’t clear the sounds of Patrick anymore. Of his laughter in his ear or the sounds he made getting fucked. He’d heard them before, but it was different being the one causing the gasps. He wondered if Patrick was having the same conversations in his head, but he was remaining silent and calm.  
   
“Why are you not freaking out?” Pete insisted eventually. He didn’t like being the only one with a loud head, with all the thoughts whirring around and around.  
   
“I never said I wasn’t freaking out,” Patrick said finally. “But everything I do say or do is wrong to you, so what’s the point?”  
   
“That isn’t true.” Pete shook his head fiercely. Where Patrick came up with this bullshit, he didn’t know.  
   
“I say nothing and it’s my fault, I say I don’t know and you freak out and runaway. I don’t know, Pete. I don’t know why tonight was the night we pushed things past what we normally have done. I don’t know. Didn’t it just feel right to you? Why can’t we just fucking feel things without explanation?”  
   
 ****

**2007**

   
Pete was motherfucking done with 2006. He was leaving so much of it in the past. Jeanae could stay the fuck away and anything to do with the nudes, well that was so far behind him. Plus, he had Ashlee now. He could hardly believe he had Ashlee fucking Simpson. They'd hooked up a few times last year, admittedly when he was still with Jeanae, but that had been a technicality and anyway, now they were hooked on each other for serious.  
   
“I love her, dude,” Pete told Andy, because no one else was around. They were on tour, of course, because they always were, but this one felt different. They were so huge right now, like Pete could do anything and he could get away with it. It was his thing.  
   
“I'm sure you do.” Andy was placid and never said much against anyone. Joe and Patrick had learned to be the same too, but it was different. There was always the judgmental undertone with the younger two. “Just be careful.”  
   
“We are. My god, she's gorgeous. How did I get her? She's fucking amazing!”  
   
“You do you, Pete.”  
   
Pete did do him, in the best way. He became this caricature of himself, hyped up by his fans and loathed by others. Ashlee’s dad hated him for the things he said about her, but he couldn't find it in him to care. It was all a giant compliment; they were like Beyonce and Jay-Z of emo. He half believed the comment, took it for a compliment over anything else.  
   
They were backstage, and Pete was on his way to find Ashlee, to bury his face in her red hair and maybe commit a few sins together before the show that night. Pete was wandering the twisting maze of backstage when he heard a voice, the sound of Patrick's laugh. He was usually tucked away on the bus before a gig. He was strange; he was friendly with everyone, spent a fair amount with Vicky and Gabe from Cobra, but he never seemed to like being with everyone at all times. He spent a lot of his free time before a show locked in his room on the bus with his computer, particularly this last tour.  
   
But Pete heard his laugh, the deep rumble of a Stump’s excitement. It was one area he’d never been self-conscious in. Patrick had a crazy full body laugh that he couldn't stop. He’d slap his thighs or clap, bending forward and repeating things between giggles if he found it amazingly hilarious.  
   
Pete caught sight of a door, not as closed as he first thought. He took three quiet steps back and peered in. Patrick was laughing, pressed up against the door, the beak of his cap twisted over. Over each shoulder was two overly tatted arms belonging to a roadie. He was pushing Patrick against the wall, kissing him, stopping the laughter from erupting out of Patrick's mouth.  
   
Pete's first irrational thought was to break the bullshitting thing up right now. Patrick's laugh was something that should never ever be interrupted and to forcibly stop it was rage inducing. Also the roadie, who Pete couldn't quite remember by name, was late thirties at best. Patrick was still practically a kid.  
   
In the back of his head, he heard Patrick's derivative little voice bitching at him for dating Jeanae and wondered if maybe, just maybe, he couldn't actually be mad at this one. He paused, still staring at Patrick kissing the roadie, his hands on broad muscly shoulders. He had a beard. Patrick likes bears. He couldn't quite believe it.  
   
Not his place, he told himself finally. Patrick was young, but he was an adult and he was private, and he was finally over Anna. People got over other people in weird ways, Pete was definitely including himself in that. He just...Patrick wasn't like other people and he didn't want to see him falter like he had before.  
   
So, Pete decided to just not mention it. He kept a careful eye and started to notice things he hadn't before, like the way Mr. Roadie had a salacious glance in his eye whenever Patrick had his back to him. To the way Patrick would turn pink at a whispered word in his ear. Pete felt particularly uneasy when he saw the roadie leaving Patrick and Andy’s bus one day, a notable spring in his step. One that he knew from himself, when Ashlee would blow him to high heaven. That was an indistinguishable fact.  
   
Pete tried to just ignore it and focus all his attention on his amazingly perfect relationship with Ash instead. They were irritating, Pete knew it. The other bands got annoyed at them, even Gabe, who Pete had known since forever, was drawing up a notable distance whenever he saw Pete and Ashlee together. Pete was a sensitive dude and when he brought it up to Patrick one time, he just shrugged.  
   
“I don't think he has a problem with Ashlee. I think together you’re both maybe, just… you like everyone to know your business and not everyone wants to know your business.” Patrick was trying really hard to be diplomatic, Pete could see it on how his pale face was crossed together beneath the peak of his cap. They were backstage in a green room, on a quick break between relentless interviews.  
   
“She makes me high in a good way. Everything is making me high these days, but she keeps me up there instead of bringing me down.”  
   
“Is that really a good thing?” Patrick said in a low whisper. “You'll have to come down eventually.”  
   
“I don't think I do, not with Ash.” Pete shut his eyes, ignoring the worried look of his friend, and then the next journalist that came traipsing into the room. When the next interview was over with, he turned to his friend. “So, are you seeing anyone?”  
   
“No,” Patrick uttered right away, his little blond eyebrows pulling in. He was lying, because Pete always knew when Patrick was lying, but there was something else there too, as if lying about it was causing upset. Interesting. Maybe their love was super-secret for a reason. Maybe it wasn't even love. Maybe Patrick was banging the roadie for the sake of it. It wasn’t his business, he had to keep telling himself.

****

**Now**

   
“It’s not easy to get into your head,” Pete said. He pulled over in an empty parking lot, the sea black and gushing in front of them. He kept his headlights on and stared ahead of him, never to the side, where Patrick was sitting, soft soft soft and kind and gentle and frustratingly closed up.  
   
“You did it in a song once,” Patrick said. “Although everyone thinks that’s about you. About your suicide attempt no matter what you say. I see it sometimes. I’m tagged in things.”  
   
“You read things you’re tagged in?” Pete said, coming out of his cagey frustration slightly. “Never do that, idiot.”  
   
“I’m learning not to,” Patrick admitted with a laugh. When Pete looked over, Patrick was pushing his bangs over his forehead, looking out at the night sea. “I’ve never been comfortable talking about things, or about us, maybe. Because sometimes it feels like our entire relationship sort of becomes about you. A little bit.”  
   
“Ouch.”  
   
“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” Patrick said, he sat up and then remembered he was clipped in by his belt. He pressed his fingers into the socket until he was freed and then twisted to stare at Pete. “I guess sometimes I just feel like the way I feel could never match the way you do and so why would I mention it?”  
   
“Patrick,” Pete said frowning. He thought of how Patrick had never really opened up unless Pete had forced him to. The only real time had been about Michael, but that had been a completely different situation. “I hope I don’t make you feel like that.”  
   
“Not really. Not for a long time,” Patrick said. “But you’re the guy with the words and I’m the guy that just plays along. I make the words catchy with music.”  
   
“…In the band.”  
   
“Not just in the band,” Patrick shrugged. He wouldn’t look at Pete. His eyes were down at the floor. “That’s just how I feel.”  
   
 ****

**2008**

   
Sometimes Pete looked back to his time during Warped Tour ‘05 and it felt like a whole other lifetime ago. He felt like he was in a different band. Things were different now. Pete wasn't sure if it was him or everyone else. No one could please Patrick in the studio anymore, and Pete could tell that deep down he was over it, being in a rock band and everything that went along with it. It had always been harder for him than the rest of them and it was taking its toll.  
   
But at the same time, Pete just didn't care anymore. He popped his pills when he felt particularly heavy about the world. He ignored Patrick and all his Patrickisms, even when he could see the heart wasn’t in it for him anymore. This way it was easier, to be so out of it that he didn't even fight about it.  
   
Home was different now too, there was Ashlee with a wedding band and a tiny squirming child who belonged to him; a shared and delicate thing that neither of them knew what to do with. Having Bronx hadn’t been in their plan. Ashlee was only 24. Pete wasn't but still, he wasn't fucking ready for kids. He was trying but he wasn’t. They were just muddling through.  
   
Still, the best part of his life was when there was no one around but his kid and he could sit there with this tiny thing in his arms and look at him, look at his nose and his chin and see his own face reflected. He only prayed he turned out more like Ashlee in personality, for B’s own sake.  
   
When they performed it was different now. There was still the haze of screaming fans, but as other bands had fallen away, as had their safety net. Patrick stood in the center, hat pulled over his eyes, shoulders up tight. He didn't want to be here anymore. The stance was the same as always, too scared and uncomfortable to look out at the fans.  
   
Pete introduced a new song, beneath the haze of screams was an undercurrent of boos. Patrick’s voice slipped on the second note, Joe missed a chord. Andy kept it perfect. They fumbled through the song, trying to get to the end as quickly as possible.  
   
Backstage, Patrick sat with his head in his hands. This was his baby, most of the songs had been his decision. Pete hesitated. There was a distance between them that he’d imposed himself. Somewhere between the roadie hook-up and his obsessive adoration of Ashlee, he’d left a lot of time and thoughts of Patrick behind.  
   
“You okay, dude?” Pete asked, watching the silent stillness of Patrick. They didn't talk, but Pete didn't talk to Joe either, or Andy. No one spoke much to anyone anymore. They showed up for filming, for gigs and then went their separate ways again. Patrick had barely even seen Bronx, and he’d been so excited when the pregnancy had first been announced.  
   
“Just peachy,” Patrick said eventually, standing up. He was so small. Even with the fact he was looking pretty fucking heavy, he seemed so small and confused. Pete wanted to help him, because he looked so out of place and like he needed a friend, but Pete was popping pills to stop the craziness getting to him, and he had a newborn and he had a wife now. He needed to look after them instead.  
   
 ****

**NOW**

Pete had sat beside Patrick with shock. Maybe. They didn’t numb the silence with the radio. They sat in quiet, only the sound of the beach below them making any kind of impact on the sound.  
   
“Inconsequential,” Pete said, suddenly, thinking back to another drive at another point in their life. “You once said that your life felt inconsequential.”  
   
“I didn’t mean _you_ ,” Patrick said. There was exasperation tugging on the last word, like he was mad at himself for bringing this up. “It’s not you that makes me feel like this, it’s just… I don’t feel like the impact I have is anywhere near what you do. Nothing I can say will change how you feel, or how you want things to go. You’ve already said you don’t want this twice. What’s the point in me arguing with that?”  
   
“I haven’t said that,” Pete argued lightly, but he could already see the tension rising in Patrick’s body.  
   
“You told me you wanted me to leave _after_ you ditched me, after fucking me on my _birthday_.” Pete had forgotten that today was Patrick’s birthday, that they’d left the party for him together. Pete had been the one freaking out about Patrick turning thirty. “And you said it would be a bad thing if we got together not even twenty minutes back.”  
   
“You don’t think it would?”  
   
“Pete,” Patrick said. He was laughing, warm soft and high pitched. Worn out and tired. “Pete, I waited thirteen fucking years for what happened tonight.”  
   
“Why?” Pete said, frowning, and then. Oh. “Oh.”  
   
 ****

**2009**

   
It had been coming for months now. Pete could see it in Joe, who barely even attempted to hide his contempt in interviews, or Andy who spent even less time with them than normal. And then there was Patrick, who had dropped half his size in four or so months. He looked healthy, but it was quick, and Pete wasn’t sure whether it had been a good idea or not. It wasn't so much his business anymore and he didn't have it in him to just ask. Not when Patrick would lie back.  
   
Then there was Patrick being Patrick in interviews and saying things in a clumsy order and setting off this stupid rumor they were breaking up, so he could do his own thing and even though he flapped and rambled at them that he was sorry it sort of occurred to them that maybe it would be a good idea.  
   
And by all of them, Pete meant the other three dickheads in the room because of course he didn't want to break up. He needed this band, he needed to use it and maybe abuse it because he had no other outlet and sometimes, maybe he got pleasure in seeing Patrick squirm on national TV, or seeing the fury in Joe’s eyes as he was ignored in another interview.  
   
“You can't be fucking happy about this,” Pete said to Andy down the phone a day later. He’d informed his manager of the plan, and they were going to announce a hiatus, bring out a video, go out with a bang.  
   
“I'm pretty sad, but it’s the right decision,” Andy said softly. “Joe and Patrick are just kids, Pete. They haven't had a chance to be out by themselves. We’re all exhausted, but they deserve a chance to do things alone.”  
   
“I know,” Pete said, suddenly feel guilty. Guilty for wanting them to carry on even though he had the most outside responsibility, like a wife and a baby, and for trying to hold Joe and Patrick back, who had both lost a sense of childhood and naivety to the band. It was right, but it didn't mean it didn't suck.  
   
The funny thing was that Pete kinda thought with the agreement that they were to have a break, they'd heal and become closer again, but it didn't work out that way at all. If anything, they saw even less of each other. Patrick was blank on stage, singing the songs, trying to hide the sadness behind his eyes. Joe stayed on his side of the stage and Pete just fell apart even more. He trashed the stage, he said the most bullshit things on TV. He was gross enough about Ashlee that she was genuinely pissed at him and he made the entirety of their last performance about himself, by shaving his head onstage. He was past caring. There was an after party for the band, but Patrick didn't stay for it and only Andy spoke to him briefly.  
   
 ****

**NOW**

   
“I don’t believe you,” Pete said eventually, because that was surely better than this, than trying to compute what Patrick had just confessed.  
   
“Inconsequential!” Patrick threw his arms in the air, finally bringing the feist to the conversation. It had been missing all night. The feisty side that sat snug with the kindness that he showed most people. Pete looked at him in shock, at the loud tone of his voice. “Of course, because you don’t believe it, it can’t be true. So fuck you, Pete. Fuck. You. I’m fucking done.”  
   
Patrick popped the passenger side open and slammed his way out of the car. Pete watched him leave with a grimace, with the sense that he should probably chase after Patrick and talk things over like the pair of adults they’d been pretending to be these last few years.  
   
He waited though, until the sight of Patrick walking down the steps toward the beach disappeared into the night and the thoughts that had been quieted momentarily started to build in his head again. 


	2. Post-Hiatus

   
   
 

**2010**

   
He didn't like it. He didn't like seeing Patrick like this. He’d been thin before, was thin during the break-up of the band, and scrawny during the early years too. It _wasn't_ that. It was the blond hair, and it was the suits and it was the way he looked at his guitarist when he didn't think anyone was watching. Pete knew, it reminded him of all those years back with the roadie. With Anna.  
   
And he looked happy. Pete wanted to be a big guy; a nice guy. He wanted to be like Joe, who was happy no matter what Patrick did, or Andy, who saw only this as a chance for Patrick to grow. He couldn't ever be like that though. He was jealous of Patrick being happy, of creating this happiness without him.  
   
“I didn't think you'd come,” Patrick had said, pulling Pete into a hug backstage. He was wearing cologne and a crisp white shirt. He looked like an adult, not a scared kid and Pete wasn't sure when that happened. The fact that he wasn't a part of it, made him even more wired.  
   
He should’ve taken a downer, something to stone him out of the anger but instead he pressed his fingers between Patrick's ribs as they hugged, only stopping when Patrick froze and pulled away.  
   
“Not so hard,” Patrick said, frowning at Pete. He looked at him and for a brief moment there was no one else around. There wasn't the buzz of pre-show nerves and the sounds of a fucking sax. There was no goddamn warm up sax at a FOB show.  
   
“I'm sorry,” Pete said. He looked at Patrick some more, soft lips, big eyes, stupid bleached hair. Pete wanted to tear him to shreds, and hated himself for it. “Haven't seen you in forever.”  
   
“That's probably my fault,” Patrick said sheepishly, willing to take the blame on this occasion. Maybe he sensed Pete’s anger, maybe he was trying to keep the peace. “I think I'm going on in five minutes, but we should get a drink afterward.”  
   
Patrick dazzled on stage. He danced and smirked, played around with a tiny silver trumpet and giggled between songs, laughing along with the modest crowd. Pete watched, hood over his head, unnoticed. Patrick looked over at his tall guitarist, smiled at him, and danced against him, white guitar stark against his dark suit. Pete’s blood boiled for one long moment. He didn't stay till the end of the set, and he didn't answer Patrick's call when he phoned a few hours later.  
   
 

**Now**

Pete didn’t leave it too long before he was chasing after Patrick, running down the steps to the beach. This pause in the drive had been the worst choice. He couldn’t see, and Patrick who was already mighty pissed with him, hated the beach. This choice in flounce would only add to his bad mood.  
   
Pete’s eyes adjusted eventually, to see a figure standing and staring at the ocean. Pete hesitated, feet sinking into black sand, before stumbling one foot in front of another until he was standing beside Patrick. He didn’t look at him, but rather out at the eerily still body of water in front of them. Maybe they could walk into it together, find themselves at the bottom of the ocean together.  
   
“You can speak now,” Pete said, and then paused. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. After the outburst and strange confessional in the car, he wasn’t really sure what was a good idea or not. “If you want.”  
   
“I don’t want to say anything else,” Patrick responded softly. Pete had known his response already because he knew everything about Patrick, or at least, he understood all of his stiff little movements that happened when he was closing up.  
   
“I promise I wont say anything dumb.”  
   
“You always do,” Patrick uttered the truth so darkly that Pete had to laugh. He saw the softening of Patrick’s taut shoulders and smiled at him, even if he couldn't pick out the features in the darkness. “Don’t take what I said the wrong way.”  
   
“How should I take it?”  
   
Patrick didn’t speak, but instead turned and started walking down across the sand, pausing briefly until he saw whether Pete was following or not. He did so, keeping in step, their elbows brushing as they breathed in the salty air, shoes sinking into the soft sand.  
   
“I haven’t spent the last fifteen years unable to do anything or anyone… I loved Anna and I loved Michael, but I loved them both because I didn’t think that we would ever actually be a thing. It was just a thing that burned under the surface.”  
   
“And then you turned thirty and we fucked up.”

“Right.” Patrick’s tone changed; hardened. His warm inviting body stiffened, and he took a noticeable step sideways.  
     

**2011**

   
Ashlee left him in a blaze of nothingness. It didn't even feel like the biggest fight they’d had in recent weeks. Only one moment she was there, the next she’d picked Bronx up and taken him away. Whatever, Pete had said. Or thought to himself, when he was in a haze. He’d loved her more, harder. The fall would always be like this.  
   
There was the sound of his front door opening and it couldn't be his housekeeper, he’d fired her a while back. He knew those shuffling footsteps anywhere. He lifted his head up from where he'd been sprawled on his couch and watched Patrick wander into his living room.  
   
“I bought burritos,” Patrick said with a frown on his face. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he just shrugged his shoulders, bags dangling from his wrists.  
   
“We can go to the dining room,” Pete said. His voice was husky. He hadn't spoken to anyone in days. They ate on two plates in mostly silence. Pete glanced up at Patrick every so often. He was softer looking off stage, wrapping himself up in cardigans and black jeans. His glasses kept sliding down his nose as he poked at the rice on his plate. Looking at him made the dampness in Pete’s chest lessen slightly.  
   
“Have you sorted out a custody agreement?” Patrick asked gently. Pete shrugged and looked away. “Right, well you should get one in place soon enough. I heard that the sooner you get one established the easier it is. For the kid and the adults.”  
   
“Where did you hear about that?” Pete laughed, even if there wasn't anything funny about it. He picked at his food some more and then clattered his fork to his plate.  
   
“Just around,” Patrick whispered. He caught Pete's eye and was staring softly. “When you're feeling up to it you should come hang out in Chicago for a while. It’d do you good.”  
   
“Maybe,” Pete shrugged noncommittally.  
   
They ended up in Pete’s living room, the one that had the giant TV and cinema seats. Patrick sat next to him, legs tucked up beneath himself, hands tucked up beneath the sleeves of his cardigan.  
   
“I’m sorry I left,” Pete said. “The night I came to one of your gigs.”  
   
“It’s okay.” Patrick twisted his shoulder, fingers curling over his own knees. He looked over at Pete, and smiled quickly. “It was pretty awkward, right?”  
   
“It was hard seeing you up there without me,” Pete admitted. He was already in the pits; one more dark confession wouldn't stop things. “You're different now.”  
   
“I couldn't be the same any longer,” Patrick said softly. “I’m just trying new stuff out. Seeing how I fit as a person.”  
   
“You've always fit well,” Pete said. He felt Patrick's hand on his shoulder, squeezing warm and light.  
   
Patrick stayed the rest of the day sitting with Pete in the home cinema. He had a show that night in LA, so he was having to meet up with the rest of his bandmates later. When he asked if Pete wanted him to call anyone to be with him, he just shook his head.  
   
“I think I want to be on my own, Patrick,” he said. The thought of other people in his house, asking how he was, was too much for him to fathom. With Patrick, it had always been easy.  
   
“You may want to, but should you be on your own? That's what I was asking.”  
   
“I’m gonna be fine,” Pete said. They'd watched old movies and acted like they hadn't spoken at all. “How’s your guitarist?”  
   
“Michael?” Patrick frowned, playing innocent but fooling no one. When Pete said nothing, he relented, looking away. “We’re good. I dunno.  I don't know what to say.”  
   
“You don't have to say anything.” Pete gave a silent, genuine laugh. “I’m happy for you.”  
   
“Thanks,” Patrick said. Pete watched his entire body sag, like he was relieved that it wasn't hanging between them. “He calms my head, when it gets all crazy. It's really serious between us.”  
   
“And he's tall,” Pete teased. Patrick shrugged his shoulder, but leaned into Pete. It was better with Patrick. It made Pete forget for a time that he was wifeless and his child wasn't here either anymore. “I hope you’re happy with him.”  
   
“I hope so too,” Patrick said back.  
 

**NOW**

“Stop being so fucking dramatic!” Pete grabbed Patrick by the shoulders and shook him lightly, just enough to throw him off guard. Patrick didn’t shove him away, but Pete could feel the sharp glare even if he couldn’t quite make out his features.  
   
“I’m not being dramatic, but every time I try and get honest with you, you just throw it in my face that this shouldn’t have happened, and I don’t know why. Why shouldn’t this have happened? Why not? Neither of us are in relationships, we’re both stable mentally. We’re both fucking grown up, now.”  
   
“But what if it goes wrong? I’m bound to fuck things up,” Pete admitted. He wanted Patrick to laugh like he often did when Pete admitted the truth, but this time he simply shrugged, like that wasn’t enough this time.  
   
“Then don’t fuck it up,” Patrick said simply. “That’s your only option.”

**2012**

Pete read the open letter the same as everyone else, and was immediately on the phone to Patrick to see how he was. Patrick's voice was flat, soft, but he didn't sound quite as broken as he had in the letter. In fact, he laughed in soft embarrassment as he spoke down the phone.  
   
“You know how rambling I can get,” Patrick said down the line. “I need a damn good editor.”  
   
“You were the best editor I ever had,” Pete answered softly. Even now, trying it out with different people, writing never did go as easy as it did with Patrick.  
   
“I think I'm better behind the scenes. I'm not good out front,” Patrick said. “I'm all domesticated now instead. I learned to cook, and I throw a damn good dinner party.”  
   
“I wanna come and see you. Is that good with you?” Pete somehow suddenly felt the need to see his old friend. Maybe in a way he felt like he failed him, hadn't been there in the ways Patrick had.  
   
“I’d really like that,” Patrick said, he puffed down the phone with what sounded like relief.  
   
Patrick picked Pete up from the airport. Pete hadn't been back to Illinois for so long now, but being back and seeing Patrick looking so much like a teenager with his small frame and neater haircut threw him for a moment. Patrick pulled Pete in tight for a hug, the softness of his cardigan brushing against Pete's jaw as he put his arms around him.  
   
“You doing alright?” Pete asked, when they pulled back. Patrick was smiling at him, but he could see that it couldn't quite meet his eyes.  
   
“I don't know,” Patrick admitted softly. He patted Pete's shoulder and then grabbed the bag at his feet. “Feels like I'm just floating right now. Kind of existing.”  
   
“I know that feeling,” Pete said as they walked from the airport. Patrick had parked, barely in a bay, and Pete smiled at how some things maybe wouldn't ever change. “I'm a dad now though, and that means I'm like fucking ace at kid’s TV, inappropriate times to cuss and, like, sugar levels in juice. Gives me focus.”  
   
“Sounds like it,” Patrick agreed. “You look happy now. Maybe more than you ever have.”

“I am.” Pete felt something flip inside, that Patrick noticed. They drove back to Patrick's house with ease. Without the weight of the band between them, it was almost easy to just be friends that hadn't seen each other in forever. Pete had missed him more than he realized.  
   
After twenty minutes or so, they pulled up outside Patrick's house and Pete stared up at it. Modest, small, but in a nice neighborhood.  
   
“Will Michael be in?” Patrick hadn't said anything about whether he was still with his guitarist, but this way he could tell Pete.  
   
“No, he's working. He's a teacher… I mean, he was a teacher before we toured. I was just a stepping stone.” Patrick's words sounded way harsher than he probably meant. He slapped a hand over his face immediately. “Fuck. I'm not actually resentful toward him at all. I just find it hard to be at home all normal. He goes off to work every morning and I wait around until he's home again. I'm just not used to it.”  
   
Pete didn't know what to say so he just grabbed Patrick's wrist briefly and squeezed it. Patrick had owned the same house since forever, he'd always had one back in Chicago, even when he lived full time in LA. Admittedly this was the first time Pete had been in it. It was light and airy, fun prints on the wall and just enough clutter to suggest Patrick made attempts to be a little less messy these days.  
   
“Michael is super neat, so I try and make an attempt at orderliness,” Patrick said. He had his hands on his hips and was staring around at his living room. “Come, I'll show you to your room and then we can catch up properly.”  
   
The guestroom was clearly where Patrick stored all of his secondary instruments. Pete knew he'd turned the garage of this place into a makeshift recording studio, but there were a least five guitars, a trumpet and some weird percussion thing too. Pete looked at Patrick, who scrunched his nose up and shrugged.  
   
“I can't downsize my instruments,” Patrick admitted.  
   
They spent most of the day hanging out in Patrick's living room just catching up. Pete showed Patrick photos of Bronx on his phone, and watched his old friend coo about it. Patrick talked about how the last time he'd seen Joe, last month, he'd been full of wedding talk. The fact that Patrick was in a long-term relationship and Joe was getting married, that kind of scared Pete. When did they get old enough to do this? The break had been about those two in particular being able to grow up, but not to this extent.  
   
“What about you?” Patrick said, digging his elbow briefly into Pete's side. “You seeing anyone?”  
   
“I've been on a lot of dates,” Pete admitted. “I'm not sure if I'll ever heal from what happened with Ashlee and it wasn't even about her. I’m not in love with her anymore, but it felt like such a betrayal. My shrink says the important thing is focusing on my own thoughts and beliefs without muddling anyone else into the picture.”  
   
“They sound wise,” Patrick nodded his head. “You know, I never thought I'd end up serious with a man. I thought I'd always marry a woman in the end. This is Michael's first relationship with a man too, so it's been different for us both.”  
   
“You've been with men before,” Pete pointed out. “I know you were with that roadie for a while.”  
   
Patrick grimaced, like he hadn't known Pete was privy to that. “That was a weird time. That was a weird relationship.”  
   
“How?”  
   
“I'm not sure,” Patrick shrugged, like he genuinely didn't know. “It just didn't feel right.”  
   
“As long as you're happy.”  
   
“I'm happy in my relationship,” Patrick admitted. “The rest of my life still seems lost in the fire.”  
   
They were real life adults having a real-life conversation. They hadn't ever been that way. Pete hadn't been a kid when he first met Patrick, but he sure as fuck acted like it. Patrick had been a kid in every way. It seemed so much easier talking now. With both their heads screwed on.  
   
Michael came home at around six-thirty, just as Patrick was pulling take-out leaflets from the drawer. They'd planned on cooking, but got caught up catching up. There was still a sadness behind Patrick's eyes, but he hadn't stopped smiling for at least an hour now.  
   
Things got a little awkward, like maybe Patrick hadn't told Michael that Pete was coming, or maybe Michael was just awkwardly shy. He had a hand on Patrick's shoulder, standing nearly a foot above him.  
   
“So... Vietnamese or Thai?” Patrick waved the pamphlets in his boyfriend’s face before deciding for himself. “Thai is always a fun time.”  
   
Pete was left alone with Michael while Patrick rambled for fifteen minutes to the Thai restaurant on the phone. Michael kept shooting looks at Pete across the room, like he wasn't completely comfortable with being left in a room with him. Pete had to wonder what that meant; why Michael didn't like him, what it was about him that was so bad. Pete had fucked up in the past, sure, but never really with Patrick. They'd only ever grown apart.  
   
By the time they'd finished eating, with Patrick’s rambling covering the awkward silences, Michael had left to finish up some marking for the next day. He kissed Patrick's cheek and nodded at Pete before leaving the room.  
   
“Dude, he hates me,” Pete said, when he heard a door close further into the house. Patrick looked up with round eyes and a confused expression.  
   
“I don't think he hates you. I just… I guess I didn't tell him you would be staying with us.”  
   
“What?” Pete sat forward and softly patted his hand against the side of Patrick's head. “Why?”  
   
“He's funny about you! I don't know, I swear I never said anything wrong to him about you, but I guess he's either a little bit jealous or overprotective.”  
   
“What would he be jealous of?” Pete laughed.  “You should have told him I was staying.”  
   
“I know. I just don't like conflict. Anyway, he's at work all day so I didn't see what the issue was,” Patrick shrugged. “Plus, I missed having my best friend around.”  
   
Pete was there a week hanging out with Patrick. They drove around in Patrick's car, searching out their old haunts, finding long shutdown venues turned into coffee shops. They drank ice teas in the same place they performed in ten years before.  
   
“You should come back to LA,” Pete said, looking at his old friend’s sweet face.  
   
“I fly out for work sometimes,” Patrick responded. “I couldn't cope living in that whirlwind again.”  
   
“Surely it's better than waiting around for your boyfriend to come home from work.”  
   
“Touché.” Patrick traced his finger up the wet condensation of his tall glass before staring at Pete. “The fans were awful, Pete. I always felt like I embarrassed them before with the way I looked so when I lost weight I thought they’d like it. They hated me even more.”  
   
“They never hated you,” Pete insisted. How could anyone hate Patrick? “Maybe you were just more hyper aware because it was you on your own.”  
   
“They threw things at me, they booed me and then I got mail to my house telling me the worst things as if I hadn't already thought them about myself.” Patrick looked down at his drink as Pete looked over at his friend. “Michael tells me that they weren't really ever fans if they did that, but it feels like it reduces what it felt like when he says that.”  
   
“They were fans,” Pete agreed. “But some fans have fucked up personalities and no awareness.” Pete had had his own fair share of shitty fan experiences, but he’d courted shitty attention.  
   
“It makes me never want to perform ever again,” Patrick said and then sagged in his chair. “That really hurts because it was one of the few aspects I enjoyed and it feels like it’s been taken from me.” Pete took Patrick's hand from across the table and squeezed it tight. Patrick had never really been this open with him before, he usually hid behind half sentences and insinuations. This was different. Pete waited for Patrick to squeeze his hand back before pulling away.  
   
“You need to be a little more sensitive around him,” Pete told Michael when Patrick was fielding phone calls to his manager. He was trying to get out of a prearranged booking to work with a band out in LA. Michael stared at Pete across the kitchen, looking surprised at the comment. He didn't like Pete, was hardly around for them to make conversation.  
   
“What are you talking about?”  
   
“I just think you're insensitive to the fact he's going through a bit of a crisis.” Pete licked his lips and stared up at the other dude. Michael was a lot taller, but if they were to disagree physically, Pete could totally take him. “Telling him that it wasn't real fans that sent him hate mail kinda detracts from the fact that it's really fucking shitty.”  
   
“I honestly don't know how to respond to that, but I don't really appreciate you showing up here acting like you care all of a sudden,” Michael said. Pete immediately felt his brows draw in close, in deep confusion, just as Patrick flew into the room.  
   
“I don't want to be the asshole that cancels, so I have to do it,” Patrick said. He placed his phone down on the island and then looked between Michael and Pete like he realized something frosty was taking place. “I hope you guys aren't fighting over me!”  
   
“Of course not,” Pete said, smiling at Patrick, who looked vaguely flustered and very horrified at the thought.  
   
“I have lesson planning to do,” Michael said instead. He touched Patrick's cheek lightly before walking out of the room. Patrick frowned at Pete, glaring with his blue eyes until Pete just grimaced and shrugged.  
   
“I was just trying to stick up for you. Not my fault he took it the wrong way.” Pete held his hands up, hoping Patrick could see he hadn't meant to cause any offense. Patrick narrowed his eyes, but finally relented, pulling Pete in for one of his signature soft hugs.

Pete stayed for a few days longer than planned. It was fucking fun being with his old friend again and he could tell that Patrick needed it. He was bored and depressed. Pete knew the feeling himself, but he tried desperately hard not to turn every conversation onto himself. So little had their friendship been about Patrick depending on Pete, that it was good for the change.  
   
On the last night he was making a midnight run to the bathroom when he heard noises from the master bedroom. He didn't want to be a perv, so he walked as fast as he could, trying not to listen to the sounds of Patrick and Michael in bed. He used the bathroom and rinsed his hands, listening to the sound of a creaking bed and Patrick's soft, whispering moans afterward.  
   
He went back to bed in Patrick's guest bedroom, surrounded by the odd shadows that all of his instruments created. Whenever he tried to shut his eyes he thought of Patrick, of the way he sounded getting fucked. It was awkward. It made Pete's body react in a way he wasn't expecting. It was the first time since he'd been there that he couldn't wait to leave for LA again.

**NOW**

   
   
   
The thought hadn’t ever really crossed Pete’s mind prior to tonight. He’d had a thing for Patrick’s stupidly cute face when theyd first met, but Patrick had been a little bitch and Pete had been fucked up. Then, he’d been weirdly fascinated by the roadie, and then a little jealous over his stable, safe relationship with boring-teacher-touring- guitarist Michael. Then they’d been kind friends to each other, looking out for each other, climbing into bunks together, but nothing else, nothing that no one but Joe questioned.  
   
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Pete said softly. He’d hurt everyone he’d ever been in a relationship with, he’d started to wonder whether it was just a part of who he was.  
   
“I’ve already been hurt by people. I was cheated on, I was left for someone else. What could you bring that isn’t either of those things?” Patrick said, he was walking backwards, back toward where they’d come down. Pete followed him one step at a time.  
   
“I’m self destructive, you know that.”  
   
“Yeah, well. Don’t treat me like shit.” Patrick paused and gently placed his head in his hands. “You’re not the only person with issues, Pete. Remember?”  
   
“No, I know.” He felt his face heat up slightly, like he was caught out in another self-indulgent moment. “Sorry.”  
   
“Do you want to be with me because you haven’t even said so yet?” Patrick asked, he turned so he wasn’t looking at Pete, stamping his way up the steps to the parking lot again. Pete followed, the feel of the gritty sand sliding down past his sneakers and beneath his soles. The friction was a strange distraction.  
   
“Of course, I want you.” Pete grabbed Patrick when they reached the top of the stairs, his calves burning. He’d already been on one run that night. He grabbed at Patrick’s hips, fingers sinking into the deep softness he found. He thought to earlier in the night and doing the same thing, only they were naked, and Patrick was on his hands and knees. “Would I have taken you back to my house earlier otherwise.”  
   
“I thought you were so _destructive blah blah blah_.”  Pete kissed Patrick, to shut up the teasing. Patrick softened immediately, and they kissed a while longer before Patrick pulled away, hands on Pete’s cheeks. “Don’t do that again unless you mean it.”  
   
“I mean it,” Pete said. he was sure of it this time and it was only current Patrick that he could think of, all thirty years of age and bundled up between Pete’s narrow hands.  
 

**2012**

   
October was Pete’s favorite time of the year without fail. He could dress up and hold onto his youth just that little bit more. Plus, it was the month leading up to his kid’s birthday and it was the first one where he was having to split it with Ashlee properly. They'd done it joint last year, when the divorce was still so fresh, and they didn't want to confuse the kid. This year had been challenging for them all.  
   
So, Pete was in the festive spirit when there was a knock on his front door. He rarely locked the gates guarding his house, the most rabid of fans had called it quits a while back now and there was no one else he was expecting. He pulled open his door in surprise when he saw Patrick standing there, a small bag at his feet.  
   
“I got dumped,” Patrick said, frowning down at his feet. There was the hint of surprise in his voice, as if the news was as fresh to him as it was Pete. Pete held the door open, swinging his hand down to pick up Patrick's bag. He must have come straight from the airport. In a weird way Pete was flattered that Patrick thought to come to him with the news.  
   
Pete settled Patrick on his couch with a whiskey even though it was barely three in the afternoon. Heartbreak was worth the early boozing. He sat beside him and looked forward, so he didn’t have to stare at the sadness on his friend's face.  
   
“So, what happened?”  
   
“He came home last night and said he was in love with a woman he met at work. I cooked risotto,” Patrick said. “He turned me into the fucking housewife and then ditched me anyway. But he did say that they hadn't done anything because he respected me too much.”  
   
“And he called _me_ a douchebag.”  
   
“But I thought it was serious,” Patrick said, and he wasn't like this before with Anna. He sounded confused now, upset. Anna had been his first heartbreak, Michael was supposed to be beyond that. “I thought he loved me, but last night he said he didn't anymore. I don’t know... I’m so confused.”  
   
“Patrick, I'm sorry,” Pete said, putting a hand on his friend's knee. The one thing that was worse than his own heartbreak, was seeing Patrick in this state. “He's a fucker. A boring one at that. Leave him to his fucking marking and his teacherly cheatery love and the way he tried to fucking box you into--”  
   
“I don't think I'm quite at the hatred part yet,” Patrick laughed, even though his voice was shaking. When Pete finally looked at him, he was wiping at his damp cheeks with the back of his hand. “I love him.”  
   
“You can’t force someone to love you back even if it hurts,” Pete said, trying really hard to ignore the little black book of past mistakes opening in his mind. Man, he had way too many skeletons in that closet. “That's not the good kind of love.”  
   
“Well, then what is the good kind?” Patrick asked, sounding more like a kid now than he ever had done.  
   
“Why you asking me for?” Pete laughed, reminding Patrick that he was in fact a divorcee and not someone with good advice. “Come on, drink your booze and forget your pain for the day.”  
   
Patrick stayed the week, crying, whining and being generally pathetic in all his heartbreak. Pete caught him mumbling a drunken voicemail to Michael down the line at 2am about working things out. Pete snatched the phone and hid it, letting Patrick cry on his shoulder.  
   
Between the general glumness of Patrick and the looking after his actual son, they worked on music together. It wasn't anything serious, but the vapors of heartache left Patrick in the moments he was hunched over equipment, finding a song out of strands of lyrics.  
   
“I don't want to go home,” Patrick said on his last night. He was doing okay when he was busy, and he was awesome with Bronx, but he'd always been good with kids. Pete would miss having him around. “I bet he's moved out already.”  
   
“Wouldn't that be for the best?” Pete offered, but Patrick scoffed at him belligerently. He was so pissy at times. Pete rolled his eyes back, in a fake mockery of his friend. Patrick's face slipped into something softer and he shrugged.  
   
“I don't like that he domesticated me and then left. Who can I be a housewife to now?”  
   
“Uh, dude?” Pete waved at himself and Patrick shoved him with his hands.  
   
“I like being friends again. I feel like we're way closer now than before.”  
   
“Right?” Pete said. There was a prettiness to Patrick's face that he hadn't noticed before. He'd always hidden it with bad hair, sideburns or hats. It was there during his solo stuff maybe, but Pete hadn't paid attention until now. He stopped himself thinking anymore about it. It wasn't his place.

 

They stayed in heavy contact with each other for a while. Patrick stayed in Chicago, in his house now depleted of Michael’s things, he was still heartbroken, Pete could hear it in his voice, or see it in person when he went to visit. Chicago seemed so much more full with Patrick in it. Sometimes he took Bronx with him and Patrick, the walking taking trivial genius he was, would fill Bronx little head with useless nuggets of information about the city.  
   
“He got fucking married,” Patrick said. They’d written three songs in the short time Pete had been staying with him. Patrick’s house, now without someone domesticating him, had fallen into his familiar chaos once more. Instruments were no longer contained to a room but sprawled from room to room. They were stationed in Patrick’s kitchen at the moment, writing songs and pretending that that didn’t mean anything. “He sent me an email last night, letting me know.”  
   
“He sent you an email?” was that chivalrous or douchey? Pete couldn’t quite tell. For all the songs he’d written over the years, at least he hadn’t made a deal about who they were about. Maybe most were obvious, but still.  This was Michael’s version of that.  “Seems like a quickie. Maybe it’s a shotgun. You know he’d want to be married before a kid arrives."  
   
When Patrick didn’t say anything, Pete looked up and saw that he looked crushed. The thought clearly hadn’t yet occurred to him. Pete cringed and stood up, wagging his hands at the computer screen in front of them.  
   
“I said the wrong thing,” Pete said, but he tugged on Patrick’s limp arms and pulled him in front of the computer. “Work your magic, Pattycakes. Don’t focus on that.”  
   
“I’m going to write us the best fucking songs. We're gonna write a badass album,” Patrick said, taking a hefty seat in front of the computer and cracking his knuckles. An album. Was that what he just said. He was snapping headphones over his ears, and ignoring Pete. Pete frowned trying to get his head around it.  
   
After spending the day being ignored by Patrick and thinking over the term _album_ in his head he finally breached the topic that night. Patrick had badgered him into watching a shitty TV boxset and they were sitting on his couch.  
   
“You said album earlier…like were writing an album,” Pete said. Patrick was staring blankly at the corsets on tv, the images reflected in his lenses. He turned to look at Pete eventually, blonde eyebrows raising high.  
   
“We write one song and it’s a one off, we write two and it’s fluke. We’ve written around twelve in the past few weeks. Does that not amount to something more than a bit of fun?”  
   
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Pete shrugged. To be a band again was a lot. It was maybe his best and worst times and it had nearly destroyed the guy in front of him now, saying things so casually. “It’d have to be different this time.”  
   
“I’m ready now,” Patrick said softly. “I was never ready or prepared for being that big. Or half the things we did, but the ringer has dried me out and I think I’m ready for something new.”  
   
“And the others?” Pete said because they wouldn’t ever be Fall Out Boy without Joe and Andy. ‘We’d have to talk to them if that’s what you want.”  
   
Patrick laughed soft and slow. He was sleepy, the small amount of body fat he now had curled up over his stomach. Pete almost wanted to rest his forehead on it and nap before he realized how weird that was. “It isn’t just my decision. If you don’t want to we can just do as we’re doing.”  
   
“It’s not that…I guess you never had much sway before. You just got caught in the waves of everything.”  
   
“We all did,” Patrick said. “Are we really going this deep during Downton Abbey?’  
   
“Sorry.” Pete looked back at the screen, head still in overdrive.  
 

**Now**

   
They had to stop kissing at some point. Pete knew from countless years of kissing people that weren’t Patrick. It didn’t stop the annoyance, or the feeling that if they stopped kissing then they may have to fill the gaps with words again. Pete hadn’t been too good with words tonight.  
   
“Thirty feels good,” Patrick was saying, when the ringing in Pete’s ears stopped and he realized that they were holding hands and walking back toward his car. He’d left the keys in the ignition, the door still wide open. He didn’t care, just squeezed Patrick’s hand tighter.  
   
“Did you like your twenties?” Pete asked when he could. He’d rarely asked how Patrick was, that wasn’t their type of relationship. He’d always just helped out when he could, by climbing into bunks or showing up in Chicago.  
   
“Some of it,” Patrick shrugged. “The last part more than the beginning. I was…well, you know me. I was never very good with myself.”  
   
“Wanna talk about it?” Pete asked. He squeezed tight to Patrick’s hand, unsure of what to do now that they were in front of his car. Eventually he dropped Patrick’s hand and pulled open the trunk, taking a seat on the edge. He patted the space beside him and waited until Patrick smiled, hopping up beside him.  
   
“Not tonight,” Patrick said softly. “We have time, right? But being the stable one in our friendship didn’t ever mean that I was stable, you know? I wasn’t your variety of depressed, but I’ve never been particularly happy either.”  
   
“I think the world can only handle one Pete Wentz, right?”  
   
“You’re not the only Pete Wentz,” Patrick teased, but he leaned in and Pete put his arm over his shoulder. “Did you ever want this like I did?”  
   
“In a way.” Pete looked out at the night sky, at the stars twinkling above to the black wet of the sea, Patrick warm beneath his arm. “Felt it like you did, but I was… I didn’t ever want to go there for reasons. For obvious reasons.”  
   
 

**2013**

   
Patrick had done what Pete had presumed was unthinkable and managed to get Joe back on the side of being in the band again. It was hard work and they basically had to rewrite the entire album again to involve Joe, but it was also fun. They all felt a little more like grown up now, cleaner and smarter, more willing to work with each other.  
   
Patrick had a girlfriend for around six weeks, but by the time he agreed to let Pete meet her, it was already over with. This time it sounded like Patrick’s decision, but he still wasn’t willing to really discuss it. Not unless he was really drunk, like the night of their album launch party.  
   
“I just chickened out, man,” he said, looking at Pete with drunk wide eyes and a soft pink mouth. He was in a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  He looked like someone Pete didn’t know. Maybe even more so than the stage outfits of soul punk.  
   
“Chickened out over what?” Pete asked. They could barely hear over the music. Pete was probably due to give a speech, but he was more engrossed in Patrick.  
   
“I just didn’t want to get hurt again,” he admitted, shoulders lifting to his ears. “I always get hurt or dumped. Usually both. Bet that would’ve gone the same way.”  
   
“You don’t know that.”  
   
“I didn’t like her so much anyway. Not like she liked me and we have the band to focus on anyway. I want to do that instead. I want to focus on the band.”  
“If that’s what you want,” Pete said. He lifted his drink and knocked the sides of their glasses together. “You’ll find someone someday, don’t worry.”  
   
   
Once they were back on the rollercoaster of being in a band again, Pete’s head became a whirlwind again. They never had time before the next thing was happening. Gigs, promo interviews, photoshoots. Performance at a stadium, quick break with Bronx at home, back on a plane, flying to Japan where they still all knew the words to every song. Patrick would look at him sometime on stage looking terrified and overwhelmed, reflecting Pete’s own feelings. Then he’d smile, like he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else and relief would flood Pete’s bones. Being on stage with all of them, but particularly Patrick, seemed more like home than anywhere else.  
   
Sometimes they’d fall into old habits. Pete would find Patrick sprawled in his bunk, headphones on and he pulled up beside him, forcing him to make room. He’d steal an ear bud and watch Patrick’s face fall into annoyance before Pete settled. They’d lay like that forever, until Pete felt Patrick’s breathing steady as he slept, and he’d leave without disturbing him.  
   
Patrick would never say anything about it and Pete never bought it up himself, but it made the long nights traveling across the country a little more companionable. Joe, however, did bring it up, mostly to Pete, as Patrick was on a phone interview at the back of the bus.  
   
“What you need is a girlfriend, you get clingy otherwise,” Joe informed him without a hint of humor in his voice.  
   
“My girlfriend and the band never really work out.”  
   
“So, you’re making Patrick your girlfriend instead?” Joe said, confusing them both further. Pete pulled a face and shook his head.  
   
“Have you had this convo with him? Or just me.”  
   
“Just you.  He’s weird about relationships. He thinks he’s unlovable.”  
   
“He did not say that to you,” Pete insisted because he knew Patrick and knew the type of conversation he had with Joe. Usually about chord progression or Star Wars.  
   
“I can read between the lines,” Joe insisted. “So, I fix you and then I fix him. Uncle Joe does it all.”  
   
“I don't need fixing,” Pete said, flipping Joe off and then laughing into his coffee. “You’re fucking weird, dude.”  
   
“Just tryn’a keep the zen, buddy.”  
   
Pete though, was always prone to the words of others and started to wonder if maybe he was doing things wrong. So, he started to go on more dates and he met a ton of hot girls who like him because he seemed to always meet hot girls that were way out of his league. He even took one on tour for a few nights and when he introduced her to Patrick, he saw the very brief creasing of Patrick’s brow before it smoothed, and he smiled and shook her hand.  
   
None of them lasted of course. They never did. He didn’t introduce them to Bronx and they didn’t last any longer than a month or so. He always said he was destined to wind up alone. Just him and his dog on his own. And his son, on a part time co-parent basis.  
   
He stopped crawling into Patrick’s bunk on late-night rides, to stop things getting uncomfortable. Patrick never said anything about it, of course he didn’t because he was Patrick and he knew to avoid uncomfortable situations at all costs. Their friendship didn’t suffer for it, at least Pete didn’t think so, they annoyed the other two in interviews, they ragged on each other constantly and they had the time of their fucking life.  
   
“Why was it never this good before?” Pete asked. They were in Japan, in a restaurant, just the two of them. The lights of the restaurant reflected in Patrick’s thick glasses. Pete took a photo, Patrick smiled for it before responding.  
   
“Because we were both depressed and unhappy with the level of fame that had been thrust at us?” Patrick offered. He’d been chirpily scanning the menu again, excited to be in a foreign country, tasting foreign food. It was always simple things with Patrick.  
   
“You told me you wanted to die once,” Pete said, randomly remembering it. When he’d been recovering from the overdose at home. Patrick’s face back then had been so soft, so shaded from the hat and the fingers pressing into his own cheeks. Sometimes it felt the years ago it was, sometimes it felt like yesterday.  
   
“That’s true,” Patrick said. He looked up, lips in a plain thin line, eyes darting over Pete’s face. “I haven’t felt that way for a long time.”  
   
“All those drives we used to go on, do you remember?” Pete said, Patrick nodded. Of course, he did. “You always let me talk and talk. I never stopped to listen.”  
   
“Don’t get maudlin,” Patrick said, he rolled his eyes, stared down at the menu again. He was smiling his fake smile, his cheeks noticeably red even under the different shades of lighting. “I have some new songs, you know. I’ve been writing a lot since we’ve been here. Picking away at some of the old lines.”  
   
“Cool.” Pete knew that response better than anything. Deflect to music and Patrick will be happier. He didn’t want to sit in a restaurant half a world away from where they’re from and talking about the low points in their life. It wasn’t the time or the place. Not yet.  
   
 

**Now**

   
“What does this mean?” Pete questioned after a solid five minutes of silence, just sitting there in the trunk of his car, with Patrick warm beside him. The niggling anxiety was building up again. “What if this doesn’t last.”  
   
“Why do I always have to answer the questions?” Patrick asked quietly, his voice a warm vibrating hum near Pete’s chest. “Tell me why this won’t work?”  
   
“Because we work together in a pressure cooker of intimacy and annoyance, because we know everything about each other and we’ve both been in shitty relationships, in fact, neither of us have ever been in a good one.”  
   
“My relationship with Michael was good.”  
   
Pete snorted. “Between him treating you like a housewife or leaving you for someone else?”  
   
“I had a part to play in both of those things,” Patrick said calmly, which broke Pete’s heart a little bit because Patrick shouldn’t ever think those things. “But because we know each other, it might mean we can work through our issues.”  
   
“I hope so. I don’t wanna stop kissing you.”  
   
“Then don’t, asshole,” Patrick said with a laugh, hand on Pete’s chest as he leaned up to kiss Pete some more.  
   
   
   


**2014**

   
It seemed strange in a way, for Pete to have considered 2013 the best of his life. He’d never wanted to grow old and he was doing so. He was mid-thirties now, with an ex-wife and a kid. His head was clear, and he was happy and satisfied. His band was in a good place, his friendships were strong, and he actually saw a future for himself outside of his own thoughts and feelings.  
   
They were performing on New Year’s, which was vaguely annoying because Pete would have liked to have gone out with someone, met someone at a bar and taken them home to see the new year in, but he supposed his band mates were the second-best option.  
   
“Don’t get whiny about it, Pete,” Patrick informed him. Even though the year before he’d still been crying over Michael ditching him. He smiled sweet at Pete though, and tried to wink even though he wasn’t very good at it. Pete laughed and touched Patrick’s shoulder through his jacket. He could always find Andy for a midnight smooch if needs be.  
   
“I wonder where we’ll be this time next year,” he said softly. “Think we’ll both be alone.”  
   
“Probably,” Patrick admitted. “Oh, I hope I get to babysit for Joe next year. Or maybe we’ll have a new album out. Have you listened to the new songs I sent you?”  
   
“Not yet,” Pete said. They were still touring, they’d just released PAX-AM but of course Patrick was writing another new album. “Soon I promise.”  
   
Patrick looked at him, no glasses, face a little scruffy with stubble. He looked at him and Pete wondered, just for a moment, what he was thinking, standing there opposite Pete in a crowded room. Then a flash went off and Pete blinked, focusing on the camera. Patrick did the opposite, shrinking away from the media circus and finding comfort elsewhere.  
   
   
   
 

**3 hours ago**

   
Patrick was thirty today and Pete wanted to throw up. It just felt wrong. Patrick couldn’t be thirty when he was always a kid against Pete. He was still seventeen to Pete, and annoyingly high and mighty. Sometimes he was a little older, confessing sad things in Pete’s old bedroom, about death in a baseball cap. Sometimes he makes it to twenty-four, calling it quits on the band, but he never focused on that part too much.  
   
“I’m fucking depressed,” Pete said to Andy at Patrick’s birthday party. Birthday party made it sound like a kid’s thing, which was apt and ironic and all the things that it wasn’t. The birthday boy was laughing with friends in the corner. It was a modest affair, a small area of a bar, an off day.  
   
“Our kids are grown,” Andy agreed. “Joe’s a dad”  
   
“Fuck.” Pete swallowed down a healthy mouthful of beer and peered darkly up at Andy. “Am I making a big deal about this?”

“Pretty much,” Andy said, laughing. He paused and put a hand on Pete’s shoulder. There was something in his eye that Pete wasn’t sure about. “It’s different with you two. With Patrick. I know.”

“Know what?” Pete said, but then stepped away. He didn’t want the All Knowledgeable Great One’s advice tonight.  
   
Pete was the king of mingling without actually wanting to. He did it anyway, drinking too much beer and pretending to laugh at jokes he didn’t find funny. He hadn’t spoken to Patrick yet, not since earlier in the day when they performed, still he followed him around the room with his eyes. He’d thrown his hat off, he was wearing a cardigan, he had a stupid smile on his face.  
   
Eventually Pete found Patrick without meaning to. He was on his way back from a piss-break. Patrick was leaning against a wall, just away from the bathrooms, but out of the hubbub of the bar. He was taking five, taking time to himself, staring down at the floor. Pete was a ceiling ponderer, Patrick had always been the other way.  
   
“I’m taking this badly,” Pete said. Patrick flinched, like he hadn’t seen Pete. He stood up and smiled that sweet warm smile that was like a warm hug. Pete went toward him, stumbling slightly. He stood until he was too close, until Patrick’s arm was in his side. “You being in your thirties makes you a real grown up now.”  
   
“I don’t know,” Patrick said. His voice was gentle, a little softer than normal. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, his eyes looked hazy to Pete. He kept getting flashes, Patrick all baby-faced, grumpy in their shared apartment, red-eyed in his bunk after Anna left. God, were they really the same people? That felt at least five lifetimes ago.  
   
“You don’t know what?”  
   
“I don’t know if thirties is grown up considering you,” Patrick said teasing. They were staring at each other intensely Pete realized, Patrick’s blue eyes on him, pupils a little wide, shoulders rising and falling. Pete didn’t know…he kept thinking about all the Patrick’s forming this one in front of him and it was messing with him. He was leaning forward and then they were kissing, and Patrick’s hands were on his shoulders and he was pressing him against the wall and then his head just shut off.  
   
It was like someone had zipped it shut, even as he kissed and kissed Patrick. It was like a jigsaw piece, something that fit right at last. Patrick’s body against the wall, the soft knit of his sweater under Pete’s hands, the taste of beer in his own mouth, the smell of Patrick’s cologne.  
   
They left the party. Pete wasn’t sure how. An Uber, he thought, kissing in the backseat on the way back to his house. He was kissing Patrick in his house, kissing him on his bed. their clothes were falling off, zippers peeling down, the tug of jeans, the way Patrick looked, naked on his bed, soft lips open in an easy gape.  
   
“Oh Jesus,” Pete was saying. He tried not to compute it, but tried not to be like with every other person he’d fucked in this bed. There was lube and there were condoms and there was the two of them suddenly, both naked, looking down at each other, at their bodies, already known to each other but not like this.  
   
“I like getting fucked. I like the weight on top of me,” Patrick shrugged. It was strange, it was candid, and Patrick was rarely that brutally honest. But he was thirty now, maybe he was changing. It wasn’t like Pete hadn’t known that Patrick liked it a little rougher, a little harder. The roadie he’d been with those years back and been a hefty sized guy, Michael was lean, but going on twice his height. And he’d heard him those few years back, moaning as he got fucked by his ex-boyfriend.  
   
“I know,” Pete said without explanation. He fumbled for the condom, Patrick rolled onto his stomach, lifting his hips. Look, but don’t look too hard, Pete was telling himself. He looked at Patrick’s soft ass, thighs pressed apart slowly. He was hard and drunk, it stopped the nerves.  
   
They didn’t keep the position. Neither were particularly sober and there was so much between them. Pete fucked Patrick for thirty seconds or so, sliding in deep, crotch pressed right to the heated cushioned warmth of Patrick’s ass, knees pressing to the outside, but then Patrick had moaned, and Pete had pulled out and they did it missionary. Pete pinned Patrick’s wrists down and they couldn’t look at each other, but they came. Pete squeezed tight and tight, thrusting harder and harder until he came. Then it was over with and they were laying there, on Pete’s bed, breathing hard and ruining over a decade of friendship.  
 

**Now**

   
Technically it wasn’t even Patrick’s birthday anymore, that had been and gone with the sex they’d had, with the arguments that had risen up and fallen over them both. Pete was happy in that moment, with Patrick pressed against him, in the few hours before dawn. He’d need to sleep at some point, but that would mean moving and moving would mean breaking the moment between him and Patrick.  
   
“It’s going to be fine, you know,” Patrick was saying, half-slurred, half-asleep against Pete’s arm. He had a fucked up head, full of things not fully realized to Pete yet, and still there was this positivity surrounding him.  
   
“We got a lot of history together,” Pete said instead. When he shut his eyes, every variation of Patrick shot past him, fat, skinny, side-burned and soft, neatly dressed and lost. All of them at once, even the naked and gasping one from hours before. It made his heartbeat rise, the anxiety unsettling him once more.  
   
“Can we go home? I need to sleep for a week,” Patrick said, even though they were leaving for tour in three days. Man, what were they going to do? Was this a real legit relationship? Was Pete even prepared for it? He smiled at Patrick’s sleepy, brilliant face and touched his warm cheek.  
   
“I can take you home,” Pete said softly. Patrick leaned into his hand and smiled. Pete tried to push the anxiety away, he tried to force any bad feeling away because he wanted this. He'd wanted this since forever and Patrick _would_ be enough. He was almost certain of it. 


End file.
